I admit that I'm not trying to be impartial. I sometimes wonder why people writing reviews try to be impartial. The whole idea of doing a review is stating your opinion and explaining why. So I have no problem stating my bias from the very beginning. This was a baseball movie. Therefore I am going to like it. Why? Because I love baseball. Every American kid played baseball at some point in thier lives. If not, then they should pick up a glove and get out in the sun. But baseball is more than that. Baseball is romantic. It's about childhood, teamwork, family, tradition, and culture. It's about having summer break and getting out in the sun to have some fun. The smell of the grass, the heat of the sun, the crack of the bat... these things are not lost on me. I love baseball.
Moneyball is not so much about baseball, but about Billy Beane the man. I'm not sure about the accuracy between the movie and the man, but if Billy Beane is anything like the man in the movie, I don't think I'd want to be in the same room as him. Every scene he is hunched over in utter pain. He's throwing things, he's smashing stereos with a baseball bat.... he looks like baseball tortures him.
But let's talk about the elephant in the room. The whole point of playing "moneyball" was that the A's were a small market team and couldn't afford to pay guys 10 to 20 million dollars a year for top tier talent. In baseball there aren't any salary caps. If you have the money, spend it. Which of course gives teams in cities like New York a very big advantage. The theory was that instead of looking at homeruns, strikeouts, or whatever; take those numbers and condense it down to how many wins he would in theory give to the team. And then putting a price on the number of wins that player would provide.
When Jason Giambi, Jason Isringhausen, and Johnny Damon left, most people wrote off the Oakland A's because the big stars were gone. I dispute the movie's interpretation of that. Because returning were guys like Mark Mulder, Barry Zito, and Tim Hudson. A starting rotation of pitchers that at the time was just scary. But yes. The fix was in. Most people saw small market teams as a farm league for the bigger teams. Once a player proved himself in Oakland or Minnesota, Boston or New York would quickly out bid (sometimes radically out bid) for that player. For example Alex Rodriguez. (I'm a Mariners fan so yes I have to bring this up.) Alex Rodriguez played for Seattle from 1994-2000. After the 2000 season he signed with the Texas Rangers for 10 years 252 million dollars. He was the highest paid player in history. How many championchips did he win in Texas? none. Texas never finished out of last place with him on the team. While the Seattle Mariners in 2001 went on to win a historic 116 games that season.
Overall, this is a great movie. It has very little to do with baseball itself and more about what this one guy went through in this one year. My only complaint about the movie was the ending. No, I'm not complaining about the historical facts of what happened that year. I'm saying the ending scene where Beane is in Boston talking to the Red Sox owner about him possibly coming to work there. They spelled out the message of the movie. I mean word-for-word. The entire thesis of the movie was layed right out at the audience's feet: Money doesn't make champions. There's so many different ways that could've been done and it just added about 20 minutes to the movie. Seriously, the movie could've ended after "the streak". They went to black screen at the end of the movie anyway! Why not do a quick sum up? Sports movies do that all the time. I hated that Boston scene. It should've been cut.
Anyway, It's a great movie. Watch it.
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